Marshall's podcast used to be a bit more substantive and I would listen to learn things about the Right-wing Catholic take on certain controversies. But lately the show has turned more often than not into a kind of dog and pony show, an ongoing advertisement for his books. Often he's spending most of his time attempting to pseudo-referee live social media interactions - which are clearly rigged. Most of the time I don't bother to listen and more than a few times I've just turned him off. He's currently pushing his new book on patriotism and so I thought I would give it another try and listen to an episode.
Marshall would portray himself as a Traditionalist, but this is highly dubious given his flirtations with Americanism. And this is where things get confused.
On the one hand he wants to present himself as a 'patriot' - even while he was some serious problems with the Founder's assumptions and operative paradigms. His solution to this is to discount and denounce Thomas Jefferson as the problem. That said, I'm pretty sure he doesn't really want to embrace the anti-Jeffersonian faction of Hamilton and the Federalists either. He simply ignores these questions.
Now this is especially ironic given that most Right-wing Libertarian types are wont to celebrate Jefferson and set themselves up in opposition to the Federalists. Marshall instead portrays Jefferson in a negative light and associates him with the French Revolution (which has some basis) even though Washington (a de facto Federalist) initially supported the Revolution in its early phases.
Once again, I find the Right is consistently dishonest and manipulative when it comes to the question of comparing and contrasting the American and French Revolutions and more often than not the contrast paradigms rely on The Terror of 1793-94 as representative of 'the' French Revolution, an episode which did not occur until several years after the initial revolution, and represented a deviation from its original programme and goals. Among other things, failures to reconstitute societal institutions and foreign invasion led to chaos, the collapse of the post-1789 Constitutional Monarchy and the unleashing of the Reign of Terror.
Marshall the 'patriot' decries free speech and openly advocates blasphemy laws and the like. While he's right there are limits to free speech, he either doesn't understand the legal history or deliberately misrepresents it. He ignores the question of religion and instead simply argues that there should be no separation between Church and State. This would be because he's an Integralist - a position that's akin to Dominionism and Reconstructionism within Protestantism. This is also connected to the fact that he wants federal money to be directed toward persecuted Christians and while I might also decry pornography and like to see it outlawed - the problem is few can clearly (and thus legally) define it and it opens many doors to censorship - a challenge to both free speech and a free press. The US has long battled over these issues and in every case the positions Marshall advocates have not survived.
The problem is Constitutional scholars and historians would look at Marshall's positions on these points and argue that his patriotism is dubious at best. He's not trying to rally Catholics and Conservatives to return to first principles and historically rooted idealism connected to the Founders. On the contrary, he's advocating for the overthrow of the Liberal order they established and a return to something more akin to the pre-1776/1787 order. In other words he's a counter-revolutionary. That's fine if he would just admit it and frame his subversive ideology as something other than patriotism. In my case I don't agree with the Founders or Marshall but I also don't pretend that I'm a patriot. I'm not - and neither is Marshall but for completely different reasons.
He tries to argue for patriotism as opposed to nationalism but this too fails and actually comes across as rather disingenuous as he has fully allied himself with avowed nationalists and the MAGA movement in general. He's all in for Trump and as such is supporting some of the worst forms of nationalism.
He would have us take up public space for Christ but can provide no evidence from the New Testament to support this. In fact he ignores both the New Testament and the testimony of the Early Church. We are certainly to bear witness (and pay a price for it) but there's no political motive to what we do. Christian ethics are incompatible with the sword and coin ethos of Babylon.
Instead he (as might be expected) celebrates Constantine and Theodosius and the shift that took place within the Church as it embraced the Roman Empire and its values. As a consequence, a new theology emerged that embraced mammon, war, and a split in Christian ethics emerged that allowed believers to conduct themselves in an anti-Christian manner when connected to an office or role of the state. Further he posits an utterly romanticised view of the Middle Ages which was (in terms of the gospel) rightly called the Dark Ages. It was time of torture, persecution, and totalitarianism. especially for those advocating New Testament Christianity. When compared to modern culture, there are aspects of it that may seem attractive and yet a serious read of the history reveals that in many ways its 'Christian' culture was a sham and it was far removed from the religion of the New Testament. This is not to defend today's world or celebrate it either. These realities simply remind us we are pilgrims and strangers - not patriots, nationalists, or forgers of some would-be fantasy of Christendom.
And how would he return to the 'beautiful civilization' of the Roman Catholic centuries? Are we to return to Ptolemaic geocentricity and a universe of spheres and quintessence? What about Galen's theories regarding humours and physiology? Marshall wants a return to Aristotle, but does he mean to return to his hierarchical concepts regarding causality? What about the Great Chain of Being? How are any of the medieval essentials, these sine qua non elements of that culture, its arts, and architecture, compatible with the Enlightenment Liberalism of the Founders and the epistemology that emerged with the Renaissance and Enlightenment? All notions of rights, the Founder's concepts of government, and certainly all modern economics cannot function within medieval frameworks. The truth is - the foundation stones of the Founders' epistemology represents a categorical rejection of medieval civilisation and its post-Renaissance and post-Reformation remnants. Marshall doesn't know what he's talking about.
Again, this is why in the 19th century Rome issued stark warnings regarding 'Americanism' - especially as floods of Catholic immigrants made their way to the United States. The fear was they would be infected by this fundamentally anti-Catholic ideology and as such Rome pushed for parochial education in order to counter this incompatible and subversive set of ideologies. Marshall is either ignoring this, ignorant of it, or deliberately trying to obfuscate these issues.
And further Marshall also wants a re-embrace of Just War Theory which has no Biblical leg to stand on. Further, I have yet to hear a Just War advocate provide a satisfactory explanation as to how that doctrine functions in the context of the nuclear age. And as an aside it must also be pointed out that the Crusades in no way, shape, or form meet the criteria for Norman, French, and English knights to venture into the Levant in order to slaughter and capture lands - for that's what they did. Worse, the butchery was wedded to a theology that sanctioned the killing and conquest, and even promised salvation for it. They were especially evil and heretically-rooted wars of conquest and Protestants used to understand that.
I will agree with Marshall that Christians need to revisit the question of marriage as New Testament teaching has been all but abandoned. And yet, while Rome is perceived to be strong on this issue, many of us know better and are fully aware that the right amount of money can in almost all cases produce an annulment even after decades of marriage - a loophole that is in reality a farce.
Large Christian families are a fine thing but I fail to understand how encouraging the lost to be more productive in terms of birth-rates is going to help anything. But here again, there is some confusion on display as Marshall frequently falls into pronoun confusion, and like an Evangelical he fails to differentiate between the Church and American culture at large. He repeatedly argues that American culture is still majority Christian - a rather stunning statement for any believer that has walked beyond their front door. Only by redefining that term and rendering it substantively meaningless can that statement have any import.
As far as arguments of civilizational collapse with birthrates under 2.1 - it's pure rubbish and sensationalism. Populations may decline but that doesn't mean that nations will disappear and their lands will be overtaken by tumble-weeds - or necessarily immigrants. Ireland lost half its population in the mid-1800's. The same is true of much of Europe in the 14th century. There are economic ramifications to be sure, but the notion that said populations (and nations) will simply disappear is nonsense. It's an manipulative argument employed the Right in order to stoke fear. In reality, he's openly advocating for the Great Replacement and wants to scare his listeners and readers into believing that a Muslim takeover is in the works.
He didn't address abortion in this promo show but I will only say that the Pro-Life movement has lost all standing and claims to being pro-life and when he speaks of compassion it's an empty pledge as the American Right seeks to dismantle every social programme and safety net that might help impoverished people survive, let alone get on their feet, or dream of flourishing.
Without openly saying it, he advocates the breaking of the public school system. While I am no fan of the public schools and don't believe Christians should send their children to them - their eradication would create more problems than it would solve. Serious reform is needed but this too is hindered by 21st century parenting or rather its collapse.
In other cases Marshall either doesn't know what he's talking about or is just willing to manipulate ideas, history, and facts to fit his agenda. He speaks of Marxism as emphasizing the individual. He wishes to expand this concept into a critique of identity politics. The problem is individualism is antithetical to Marxism and Identity Politics has nothing to do with either. Individualist expression was hardly encouraged in the Communist bloc. The plague of Identity Politics is the result of individualist Liberalism gone to seed. It's democracy reaching the stage of self-destruction. It emerges in the context of capitalist decadence which itself emerges in the wake of empire and its riches. Such societies decay in the face of luxury as opposed to adversity which breeds character, sacrifice, and in the face of national struggle - a sense of patriotism and civic duty. Identity Politics is the deformed offspring of liberal democracy and Capitalism.
He speaks of parental rights but we know this is absurd as a Taylor Marshall-envisioned state would force religious education, control consumption, enforce censorship, and mandate participation in rites and rituals. He's simply disingenuous. Parental Rights only exist within his established boundaries. Beyond that, they are meaningless. As such, he does not believe these are truly 'rights' but rather privileges and prerogatives within a very narrow set of boundaries.
It would be a good thing if trafficking and exploitation were stopped, but so much of this is the result of economic destruction and displacement and the wars he critiques in broad terms - but doesn't seem to understand. For someone so keen on markets he fails to connect dots and how the Pentagon and Wall Street exist in a symbiotic relationship. Additionally, I don't hear him critiquing Trump's war policies - or the murder of Venezuelans.
He hints at economic reforms and speaks in passing of usury and fiat currency. This made me smile as I know he's an advocate of Free Market Capitalism but doesn't understand that the system is built upon and fully relies on usury and the notion of credit. He presumably wants to return to the gold standard but has (it would seem) chosen to ignore the problems associated with it - it limits credit and thus limits growth. It falls easily into cycles of not only inflation (driven by credit) but corrective deflation which in turn wreaks havoc on the banking, insurance, and real estate industries (and thus markets and investment) - and on an international level the value of currency which in turn affects trade. A currency rooted and attached to precious metals is fine - but largely incompatible with global capitalism.
Marshall has a plan, but it's like trying to draft a complicated engine schematic with crayons or children's chalk. It's silly and his positions are often ridiculous. He contradicts himself, rewrites history, invents new definitions for terms, conveniently ignores anything that doesn't agree with him. I don't have to pick up his book to know that it's ridiculous. But he tickles ears and so he's popular and has done very well for himself. Unfortunately he's misleading people and seems to live by the consequentialist ethic - the end justifies the means. As long as people support the right party, policies, and politicians, the fact that your arguments are built on sand and lies is of no import.
As Christians we know there are serious and profound problems with this culture and unfortunately because of the kind of confusion Marshall displays, the culture has made easy in-roads within the Church - in the case of Marshall we wouldn't even agree on the nature of the Church or the gospel. By these measures his Roman Catholic Christianity is of course in doubt and yet the programme he offers (at least in the broad strokes) is in keeping with what many Protestants advocate. This too should be a reason to give pause.
There is a desperate need for Christian witness but it has to be Biblical in nature. Marshall offers a convoluted and deformed vision and what is at best a syncretist solution. He's not a patriot and what he advocates hardly qualifies as Christian.
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